The Hidden Heritage of a Landscape:

Vengeful Vikings and Reckless Rustlers

...on the Arrochar-Tarbet isthmus

This project and website was part-financed by the Heritage Lottery Fund and also by the Scottish Government and the European Community Argyll and the Islands LEADER 2007-2013 Programme.

The Hidden Heritage Project was awarded a Highly Commended in the prestigious national Marsh Award for Community Archaeology!

Huge thanks to all the partners and volunteers who made it such an enjoyable and successful project!

We are proud of our unique landscape, which connects Arrochar and Tarbet - two small communities in Argyll and Bute that hug the shores of Loch Long and Loch Lomond and nestle among the 'Arrochar Alps'.

This special strip of land connects people and places. It connects the present, the past, and the future.

Our community-led heritage project aimed to uncover the hidden heritage of this landscape. We wanted to rediscover its past, understand its present and celebrate its future.

For centuries this strip of land has provided a vital link between the Clyde sea lochs and inland Scotland. It has been a through-route and a place to stay. It has been a place to live, to farm, to enjoy and a place to bury the dead.

In times gone by this isthmus was used by Vikings to portage their boats from Loch Long to Loch Lomond, by MacFarlanes to grow their crops, by drovers to take their cattle to market and by Victorian tourists keen to experience the Scottish Highlands.

Our children journey across it every day to school, holiday-makers pass through without realising its significance, commuters and shoppers take little notice of the humps and bumps in the landscape.

This landscape is at the heart of Loch Lomond and The Trossachs National Park. Please join us to discover it for yourself...